


K.K. Love Song

by socksock



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Characters Playing Animal Crossing Game(s), F/M, Loads of pining, Long-Distance Relationship, The quarantine story no one asked for, Zelda saves Hyrule from Covid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,326
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25120639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/socksock/pseuds/socksock
Summary: With Hyrule on lock-down, Link has nothing to do but pour time into his Animal Crossing island.With the ongoing crisis, Zelda really shouldn't be spending her precious breaks pining after a guy she met on the Animal Crossing forums.
Relationships: Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 150
Kudos: 654





	1. It's Not a Date

It’s not a date.

Even without—you know— _everything_ , Link still wouldn’t have a chance. Even without the long distance, even if she was in the market for a boyfriend rather than in the market for a long nap, she’s out of his league by…a lot. No one as smart as her would put up with him for long. No one as put together as her would like how he didn’t change out of his pajamas yesterday. All they’re doing is hanging out, and talking about their boring, stressful days, and sitting on the beautiful, moonlit terrace that he’s spent the past three days building. It overlooks the ocean, and there’s gauzy, pink mood-lighting and a table for two with candles and elaborate place settings, and a telescope and flowers and a little two-person glider where they could snuggle.

So. Clearly not a date.

Link puts on slacks. He gives in while he fixes dinner and asks his grandma’s advice about if he should put on the sweater vest with the knot of tie peeking out of the top, or the sweater with just the shirt collar poking out the top.

“Wear that nice suit jacket with the bow tie,” she says, popping up on her tiptoes to look into the skillet on the range. She reaches a spoon into the risotto and sneaks a taste.

He gives her a confused look. “…You mean, the purple jacket? With the sequins?”

“Yes. I like that one.”

He will not be wearing that. No.

Or maybe that would be funny? Endearing?

...

No. Goddess, no. What’s wrong with him?

He serves up helpings of risotto and salmon and tries not to talk about his not-a-date anymore and tries not to act too eager for eight o'clock. His grandma makes fun of him the whole time. They work on a puzzle together and listen to her current audio book while he tries not to look at the clock. At 7:30, he retreats to the guest room.

“I won’t wait up!” she calls after him.

He shouts, “Night!” and shuts the door behind him.

He pulls his slate from his pocket, where he's been purposefully not touching it, and puts on his sweater and poses in a goofy way that makes him rethink his life. How did he get here?

Well. That was a long story, wasn’t it?

So, in his sweater and slacks, he runs to the airport and asks Orville, the NPC dodo bird behind the desk to open the gates to his Animal Crossing island.

Orville salutes with a whistle, and it’s kind of like he’s wishing Link luck. Not to be dramatic, but Orville might be Link's best friend at the moment.

Things are weird.

Link actually does have a lot of flesh and blood friends who he’s met via Animal Crossing. At first, he just went on the Sheikah network to look at pictures of people’s kitchens for inspiration. (Where was he supposed to put his amazing stand mixer—pride of his home, pride of his whole island?) But then people also had inspiring plazas and inspiring green houses and custom designed pathways. And then he was watching a video of someone who had turned their island into the moon, and then a video of someone who had all their tulips arranged like pixels to recreate the stained glass in the Temple of Time, and the next thing he knew, he was getting an account to post on one of the major forums, and then he was posting a picture of how he’d recreated the restaurant where he worked in college down to the red carpet, and then he was visiting a stranger’s island to sell turnips for 502 bells.

He struck up friendships with people trading rare items and kept in contact because Mipha got all her villagers to wear ugly sweaters that she designed and Nico had a really clever force-perspective thing going on. But Z is the only person he’s traded slate IDs with. She’s the only person whose voice he’s heard. She’s the only person allowed to use a shovel on his island, even if she still hasn't told him her real name.

Z is an essential worker, doing PR for the government. She’s the only person Link knows who still leaves her house. She obsesses over the Sheikah network as if government provided network access will allow this whole disaster to pass in a month. From the sound of it, she's single-handedly keeping the over-taxed network running. Her Animal Crossing breaks are brief, regimented, and deserved. She takes fifteen-minute breaks to take care of her island at 10, 4, and 8, but very late at night, she’ll play for longer if she can’t sleep (which is often).

He’s convinced her play for longer tonight only because it’s Friday.

He paces around the little plaza he’s built in front of the airport, tidying up some fallen twigs and considering for the fifth time that it would look nicer if the street lamps were a different color.

His Sheikah slate dings with an incoming voice call only a few seconds before the banner crosses his screen announcing that a visitor is arriving. He puts her on speaker phone and switches back to the game. "Hey."

"Hi." She's a bit breathless in a way that makes his face warm. Like she's excited to see him. Like he's already taken her breath away. Like she ran from work to make their date. (Their not-date.)

When she steps off the dock, she’s in a pale-blue shirt dress that she made herself. On top of her blond hair, she has a flower crown of blue and orange hyacinths. He has no idea how she made that, but doesn't want to ask because spoilers.

She greets him with a little tinkling wave. Z does a lot of that: in-game applause and laughter and singing and dismay. He's learned from her that a well-timed shocked expression can be the funniest thing he's ever seen. In the beginning, he would have to fumble around, forgetting which button opened the emotions menu and then not having any idea which one made little flowers float around his head. But now he flicks through easily and waves back.

"You're done for the day!" he says. He's grinning. Because he's gone on this woman. That's not a good thing.

"Thank the Goddess. Today was miserable. The Gorons are streaming so many movies, the whole northern network had rolling brown outs. They’re not even in lockdown! They just decided to discover streaming video yesterday because everyone else has been talking about Lanayru Fortunes. They watched 750,000 movies today and there are only 500,000 Gorons. I don’t know what’s happening. Oh, I hadn't seen your new plaza. It's nice!” She runs off to circle around one of the lamp posts, around which he made little flower beds with brick sides. "That's clever."

"I stole it from Saria," he says. Because he's a dumbass.

"It's still very nice. Maybe I'll steal this for my community garden. What else have you made? It feels like ages since I've been here. You always visit me."

"Your town in nicer." Link's town is remarkable only due to the sheer number of restaurants and food stands that he's created. He has half-baked plans for a food truck. But Z's town is a masterpiece.

"My town is obsessive," she says. "Let's not sugar coat it."

"It's a labor of love."

"It's the outward manifestation of my control issues. What else have you made? Distract me.”

"I made a moonlit deck and a checker board, and I gave Cobb a flea and he put it in his house on display."

"You made a model of a flea?" she asks.

"No. A flea. He has it under a glass on top of a sheet of loose-leaf paper."

"Wait. You GAVE him a FLEA?"

"I didn't think he'd like it as much as he does!"

"You're such a jerk! Show me."

He takes off running to Cobb the pig's house with his hands flung out behind him. She follows, running after him. Soon they're in Cobb's house, looking at the flea he has on display.

"Wow," she says.

"I know, right? He's so weird."

They have yet to speak to Cobb, and they probably won't before they leave. He just plods around in the background.

"He loves you, and you gave him a flea."

"Well, yeah. I feel a little bad about it now."

"Maybe if you give him enough other stuff, he'll run out of room and get rid of it."

"Maybe?"

"I want to see your checkerboard."

He thinks it's a pretty good checkerboard, with cylindrical stools that he's painted black and red. He has a bunch of tiaras off to the side, and when a piece gets kinged, you have to run and get one and put it on the piece. It’s funny because the tiaras look like baseball hats when set on the ground, so they could be any kind of hat, but they’re not. They’re tiaras.

Link thinks he's hilarious.

Z appreciates his attention to detail.

Link preens, although it is kind of hard to shove the pieces around sometimes.

They play two whole games where she beats him handily.

She uses the aggravated reaction and says, “You’re letting me win."

“What? No, I’m not,” he squawks. “I don’t know what’s going on. I used to be good at this game.”

“When?”

“You know. The last time I played. Whenever that was.”

“When you were a child?”

“Yeah?”

“Link,” she says in a patient come-on-now voice.

“Hey, it’s not nice to make fun of how bad I am at this. That’s rude.”

“Oh.” Her voice turns honestly apologetic. “I’m sorry. That was unkind." Her avatar bows to him in apology. "Would you like to play again?”

"Sure. Are you using a strategy or something?"

"Do...I have a strategy?"

"Yeah."

"...Yes? Are you...not using a strategy?"

"What?"

She's quiet for a long moment, probably weighing weather he's messing with her or not. He stays quiet and doesn't give it away.

Finally, she sighs. A star appears over her and falls on her head. With posh, round vowels, she says, "You suck."

"That's rude too," he says, but he can't quite hide the smile in his voice.

"Ugh! I could just—" A timer goes off in the background and she cuts off and shuffles around. "Sorry, I have to duck away for a second. Is that okay?"

"Yeah. I'll be here."

"Good. I'll be right back." She takes a seat on one of her pieces, and then the line clicks in a way that tells him she's muted herself.

He checks the time. It's 8:59. Frowning, he takes a seat too, mutes himself, and swipes over on his slate to the nightly royal broadcast just in time to see the king walk alone to a miced podium at the top of the castle steps. He’s wearing a royal blue mask the same color as his suit. The mask is the same style as the princess’ (and thus the same style as Link’s and his grandma's and everyone else who learned to make masks from the princess’ informative video about mask making). It makes Link think the princess made it. But that’s silly if he thinks about it. 

The king has several pieces of paper in his hand, which is a bad sign. He doesn't set them down on the podium in front of him. He doesn't touch it at all.

"A moment of silence," he says, his voice clear despite the mask in a way that exudes leadership, "to honor and mourn those we have lost today." The king closes his eyes and bows his head. Link swallows. The usually bustling neighborhood outside his window is eerily quiet, eerily dark, the whole city, the whole country bowing their heads and counting their losses. Just like every night, the moment of silence seems to go on too long, but Link still isn't ready when the king lifts the papers in his hand and begins to read. 

Names of today's dead.

It takes eight minutes.

The king's voice is hoarse by the time he says, "May the Goddess smile on them."

The king clears his throat and tells everyone that there are no new ordinances for tomorrow. They all need to keep doing what they're doing. Only together can they get through this. Stay inside. Wear your mask. Wash your hands. It's familiar and repetitive in a way that makes Link feel sick.

And then it's over.

Z doesn't come back for a few more minutes. She always takes the nightly broadcasts hard. Like it’s her fault that people can't get everything they need through the Sheikah network, that anyone would ever want to visit their family and friends in person when they could see them and her them anytime. She and Link could very well listen to the broadcast together. They could un-mute their slates and at least hear each other breathe as the names pound against their hearts. They could talk about it when it's over.

But they're not going to. They'll both hold their grief alone.

He moves some things around on the checkerboard and browses through the Animal Crossing forums to see if he can find a way to get rid of Cobb's flea. When her slate mic clicks back on, the first thing he hears is a shriek.

He smirks and switches over to the game, where he's scooted all the pieces to the side and set up a giant Godzilla statue so it's right there, facing her.

"What is—You nearly gave me a heart attack!"

He un-mutes himself so she can hear him laugh.

"That's not funny," she says, but laughter sneaks in around the edges of her words.

"It's so funny."

"Okay. It is." She sighs. It's like an unloosening. "Oh, Goddess!"

"You want to play again?"

"Of course. I have to give you a chance to make a comeback.” Then she says, "You should make a chess board."

"No way in hell."

They never make it to the moonlit deck.

#

It's not a date.

Even with—well— _everything_ , it's hard for Zelda to date. "I kind of like you, and because of that, I need you to sign this non-disclosure agreement before I seriously consider whether or not I want to kiss you, and then I will go on a rather lengthy rant about the truly horrible parts of my job, and then have a very awkward, emotional conversation about my relationship with your ruling monarch, and also in twenty years or so I will be your sovereign as proclaimed _by the Goddess_ , and you're just going to have to deal with that power imbalance," is not the best pitch she's ever given. 

And then there's the fact that she really shouldn't be setting herself up for distraction right this second. Forty-five minutes a day to play Animal Crossing while she has coffee and lunch and her daily "brain cleaning" (as her father calls) it is not only a reasonable allowance, but also absolutely necessary so she doesn't lose it on national television when she's supposed to present herself as a pillar of calm to millions of people. She cannot afford to be daydreaming about a man's soft accent or swooning over how he found her a recipe for a cherry blossom umbrella a full month after cherry blossom season. 

And she really can't devote enough time to him anyway. "I know we were going to...talk on the phone for more than fifteen minutes?...but we just agreed to close our border with the Rito, and I have to record an address to all the stranded Hylians while the Department of Inter-Province Affairs rents out a hotel for them, and I need to do all the leg-work for a royal decree to push through the funding on that so it can happen in the next six hours, so...rain check?" 

Link would surely feel neglected. All her previous romantic entanglements felt neglected, and she wasn't even in the middle of an ongoing crisis when she was with them.

If he knew what he'd be getting into with her, he wouldn't be interested anyway.

So it's not a date.

They're just going to walk around her Animal Crossing island, which she's meticulously crafted to look like Castle Town, and they'll pretend they're actually out walking, visiting her favorite bookstore and the record store and the apple grove by the river where she's spread out a picnic blanket in front of the gazebo. 

You know, usual not-date activities.

When the timer on her slate goes off, she stretches with a groan and closes all her work applications. She pushes back from her desk and relocates to the other side of her office, kicking up her feet onto one arm of the comfy sofa, leaning back against the other arm. She gets all the food for her picnic set up: a picnic spread and a pitcher of sangria and two different cakes, because she knows how much he likes food. 

As if they were actually going to eat together.

Goodness, that's foolish. Link makes her foolish.

He texts before calling, the notification popping on the side of her slate screen.

_Can I come over?_

She voice calls him in response, and he answers before the second ring. "The gate should be open."

"Cool." Then, "What's new today?"

She sighs loudly and decides to answer as if he's talking about her Animal Crossing town. For the next fifteen minutes, she's in charge of _this_ version of Castle Town. "Sahara's visiting today. She has a red Persian rug and the garage parking lot floor. It's hideous."

"You don't want to turn one of your rooms into a parking garage?"

"I do not."

She's rushing to the airport to meet him. She has plans to be watering the flowers at the entrance of town when he comes in, looking like she's not waiting for him. The banner crosses the screen that someone's on their way

"And Bea has a cold, but I've already given her some medicine."

"Does that mean The Milk Bar is closed?"

"No, it's open. But we will not be visiting. I gave her a mask, but still."

The most difficult part of Zelda's massive project to make her island look like Castle Town is how she has made the villager's houses look like places she used to frequent: The Milk Bar, Kass Records, the Temple of Time. She had to get the right villagers to get the correct wallpaper and flooring inside buildings, meaning she had to shamelessly kick out the incorrect villagers and painstakingly encourage others to move in. She carefully gifts them the correct furniture until the rooms have the correct aesthetic. She can't rely on the to arrange the furniture properly, or even logically, but the effect is almost close enough. She has the buildings meticulously arranged onto the boulevards of Castle Town. The museum is where the Royal Museum of Natural History is. Timmy and Tommy's is where Malo Mart is. She's done everything she can with stalls and screens and hedges to make the outside look perfect.

Link chuckles at her, and it stirs something in her stomach.

When he steps off the dock, she has her back to him, watering flowers, waving her watering can back and forth. 

"You look nice today," he says.

"Oh. Thank you." She tried. She had to make this dress herself to get a cute, summer, lacy thing that didn't make her look like a cake. Or a princess.

She spins around to show off, and he claps for her.

He has not dressed up (because it's not a date), but his shirt is a blue that brings out the color of his eyes. She wouldn't call it attractive (because he still looks like he's an Animal Crossing cartoon person), but for the hundredth time she has to hold herself back from asking him for a selfie. She did enough of an investigation on him to know what he looks like, but she set up her slate to block the Sheikah site for the restaurant he works at, because she was visiting it too often and spending too much time looking at the group photo of the kitchen staff, and now her slate keeps recommending that she get a reservation there. 

It's embarrassing, and also they're not open.

Instead of burying this down deep where he'll never know about it, she says, "My slate keeps recommending restaurants that aren't open. I should really get someone to adjust the algorithms."

"All my slate's recommended to me for weeks is Animal Crossing stuff, and I'm not mad."

"Well, that is all you do with your slate."

"Not true. I'm also watching my way through the Hyrule Film Institute Top 100 list, and I'm baking my way through the King Nohansen Flour cookbook."

She starts heading toward Kass' Record shop, not running like she usually does, but walking slowly to show off the central plaza (which he's already seen and with which he even helped a bit, but maybe he'll still find it impressive). He falls into step beside her.

"What film did you watch today?" she asks.

"Desert Ruin."

"Ooo."

"We watched half of it. We stopped at intermission because my grandma had her knitting group."

"And you needed to help all her elderly friends get connected to the group chat." She's never sure if she should be enamored that Link possesses this skill and that his main job these days is to assist elderly women with the technology she's providing for them, or if she should be frustrated that the elderly ladies can't understand how to do it themselves. Her words come out in a rueful huff.

Link hums, but keeps talking about the movie, "Apparently, my grandma and her family saw the movie in theaters fifty years ago, and my grandma got a cocktail at intermission and snuck out with a young man she met at the bar, so she didn't see the second half of the movie. And apparently, her family was so mad at her that no one was allowed to even mention the movie ever again."

"Wait, so she's _never_ seen it? It's a classic. It's a cultural touchstone."

"Neither of us have seen the second half."

Zelda gasps. " _You've_ never seen it either?"

He laughs.

They've arrived at Kass's Record store and they head inside to peruse all the KK Slider albums put on the walls and pretend to flick through the boxes and boxes of records that Zelda has customized to have album art.

"If you weren't so busy, I'd offer to watch it together," he says.

Her heart sinks a bit.

"But then I also have to watch it with my grandma, and she talks through movies. She keeps pointing out actors and telling me she dated them and they were lousy tippers and she dumped them in solidarity with food service workers. So I think it might ruin the effect. Oo! KK Condor!"

She laughs. "That's the song that plays in your house."

"Because it's the best."

"You've heard all the songs and know which one is best?"

"Yes. I'm thinking of making it the town tune."

He starts humming it, which is ridiculous. The song is too fast and the guitar part is missing, but he's also fairly good at it, almost as though he's practiced, which would be impressive if it wasn't so adorable. Suddenly he switches to the nonsense syllables that KK uses, and it's such a spot on impersonation that she can't help but laugh. He knows the words, even though the words aren't even words. Encouraged by her enjoyment, he sings louder, and then the whistling part comes in, and by then she's laughing so hard that tears leak from her eyes and she's curled around her slate gasping.

He sings the whole song. Because he's that much of a dork. Because he can tell that it's lifting her mood.

When he slows and comes to the end, she sighs and wipes her eyes, she smiles at him, and he smiles back, humming lightly in adoration. She eases closer to him as he eases closer to her, and they're face to face and so close and—

There's not a command for kissing someone in Animal Crossing.

Oh no.

She clears her throat and turns away and runs to the other side of the store, to where the album of KK riding a motorcycle hangs on the wall. "Do Go KK Rider! now."

He obliges. Half way through, her timer goes off, telling her she has to return to work. She lingers, lets him finish, doesn't head for the door and walk him back to the airport while he sings. It feels like he slows down a little bit, to make the moment last.

"Okay," he says. He sounds disappointed. Or maybe it's her imagination. "I'm gonna go. And you're going to have a productive afternoon."

"Of course, I am," she says. Her shoulders are already straightening.

They head for the door together. Once outside, he takes off running for the airport. She follows behind.

"And I'm going to watch the rest of that movie and let you know if my grandma thinks it was worth it to skip out on the ending."

"I'll just spoil it for you: it wasn't. That film holds up."

"Better than banging some stranger you met in the lobby? I don't know."

"Well, I wouldn't know, but I assume it would depend on how good the bang was."

"That's probably true. On second thought, let's not ask my grandma for details about this."

"Spoil sport."

"See ya, Z."

"Bye."

She ends her voice call and sighs rather dramatically as he leaves. She presses her slate her chest and lets her head fall back against the arm of the sofa to look up at her ceiling.

They never made it to the picnic.

And she’s late getting back to work.


	2. Chapter 2

"You know what I miss?" Link asks suddenly.

"What do you miss?" Z asks, then answers the question herself, “I miss softball.”

“Really?”

“Every year there's a government inter-departmental softball league, and my father takes it very seriously, and that means I take it very seriously, because the Department of Scientific Advancement _must beat him_."

Link laughs. They're on their own islands today, because she needs to work on her flowers. Once she has them sorted, he'll go over this evening and help her water them.

"The tournament is obviously canceled this year, and it makes me realize how much I actually enjoyed it beyond being overly-competitive...Also my father is focusing most of his grief on softball being canceled, and I suppose if he wasn't gloomy about this, he'd be gloomy about something else, but it makes me miss softball. Anyway. Tell me what you miss."

"The fish market,” he says.

"That would not have been my first guess. Explain.”

"I want to get up so early that it hurts my bones, and then lug a big cooler onto a bus. _A bus_!"

"Ooo."

"--And ride out to the docks on the river. And I want to go into that big warehouse fish market where everybody's shouting and there are forklifts beeping, and you have to _squeeze past people_ who are all _crowded around_ the best salmon."

“Mmm. Talk dirty to me.”

"I miss how it smells," he says.

"Of course."

"It's not a _fishy_ smell. Fresh fish don't smell like that. It's like...I just want fresh fish. The stuff the grocery can deliver is..."

"Not up to your high standards?"

"I understand the limited selection, and I'm not complaining--"

"Except you are."

"I'm just saying that the second lockdown is over and the barges roll in from Lurelin, I will be there. I just really want to touch a whole, fresh fish."

"I could go for fish," she says. He's not sure if she's humoring him or not.

"I'm going to make a fish market on my island,” he announces. He's just finished his daily circuit: hitting rocks and talking to his villagers and checking turnip prices and keeping his flowers from taking over, etc etc. But now he has the start of a _plan_.

"Oo!" It sounds as if Z leans forward in interest. "What would that look like."

"I'm thinking less the Crenel Hill fish market, and more like the one in Lurelin. Right on the beach. I could make a--a kind of pier with wood flooring."

"Oh! Do one of those raised decks!"

"Like those fake stairs you have by the Temple of Time?"

"Exactly! Do you want to borrow my patterns? You'd have to adjust them a bit, but--You know, that sounds fun. I might just make it myself."

"Let me make my fish market!"

"Fine. Fine. What else? Just a dock? How would you do the fish?"

"Models. Lots of models." 

"So you're going to spend months waiting around for C.J. to visit."

"Can he make models for me when he visits your island?"

"No."

"Huh. Maybe I'll trade with people. Or maybe it'll take a while. I don't mind, I'm pretty serious about this. It'll be a growing fish market."

"You could probably get a lobster tank."

He's already at the beach where he's decided his market will go. He's going to need to move some trees. It's going to be a little close to Leopold's house. But then again, he's unsuccessfully been trying to decorate around Marina's house for a while, and she (as an octopus) might be into a fish market. So maybe he'll switch her house with Leopold's. 

Then maybe he could make Leopold that wine tasting bar he’s been sort of thinking about. He saw that the new expansion has big barrels.

Getting a bunch of those really will take forever.

His grandma asks, “Are you going to move Leopold’s house?”

His grandma is sitting next to him on the sofa, knitting and watching his game on the wall screen. She declined her own house on his island when he offered, but she likes to watch. And comment.

“I’m going to switch him with Marina.”

"Oh, she'll like that. Won't that be expensive?"

"I'm a billionaire."

"Of course. I forgot. Oh! That means Leopold will be next to those cliffs. That would be a lovely spot for a vineyard."

Last week, he showed her a picture of the bar someone made--the same picture that inspired his wine tasting bar idea--and ever since, she's been pushing him to build a vineyard, which is not at all the same thing.

"I'm _not_ promising a full vineyard. Wine tasting bar, maybe. I don't even know how I would make a vineyard."

"Link?" Z asks.

"Yeah, sorry. I'm here."

"...Is...your grandmother...in the room with you?"

He darts his eyes to the side. If he poked out his elbow, he could nudge her. "I'm wearing headphones."

"So...that's a yes."

"Hello, dear! Don't mind me!" his grandma shouts, even though Z can hear her just fine if she talks normally.

Link cringes. 

Z is silent.

He's messed up. He's messed up bad.

"How long has your grandmother been sitting there silently?"

"I swear she's not eaves-dropping."

"No, of course not. I'm saying you're rude for excluding her in her own home, and for not putting me on speaker phone."

"Wait. You want to talk to her?"

"Of course. She sounds fascinating."

Link looks over at his grandma, whose eyebrows are raised so high it makes her face look longer. 

"She wants to talk to you," he says.

She makes an over-exaggerated Yikes face. "Oh dear, you've messed up, haven't you?"

Link takes out his headphones, C-shaped loops of the same material as his slate that hook over his ears and tuck into his ear canal. The lights on them switch from blue to orange as the speaker takes over. "Okay. There you go."

"Hello," Z says. "It's a pleasure to meet you."

"She sounds fancy," his grandma says.

"You don't have to act surprised," Link says.

"Fancy enough to help you with your vineyard."

Z asks, "What's this about a vineyard?"

His grandma explains, "Don't you think over by the cliffs there would be the perfect place? He's not doing anything with it at the moment."

Link protests, "I have that shell garden," even though he doesn't really like it.

"Are there shrubs that would look like grapes?" Z asks. "I'll look it up. I'd do it with customized screens, but they might be too tall. The perfect thing would be if there was a fence, but I don't know how you would add the vine part. Or maybe some furniture items that are vine plants that look like grape vines without grapes, and they would just look like they're not in season. Like morning glories. Are there morning glories?"

"I did not agree to a vineyard. I said maybe to a wine tasting bar."

"How silly," Z says. "Where will they get the wine? The flowers on the pink hydrangeas look purple, but they're almost out of season."

"You'll have to harvest them as soon as you plant them," his grandma says.

He lowers his controller to his lap. "Are you two ganging up on me?"

"Yes," Z says and his grandma says, "Of course."

"Do you want the lattice pattern from my rose garden?" Z asks. "You could adjust it for grapes. If you put it on screens it would be too tall, but maybe for the back row? Or you could do it with stalls. How would that look?"

"You're wasting your break planning my non-existent vineyard."

"I wouldn't call it wasted. Your grandmother and I are fancy, and demand access to quality wines. I'm exacting in my preferences, and I'd hate for you to mess it up."

Link groans. He just wanted to make a fish market. He heads into Resident Services and takes out fifty-thousand bells form his savings before convincing Tom Nook to let him move Leopold's house. Now he just has to find a bare spot of land to put the house for a few days. Probably on the beach. Hopefully Leopold will be cool with it.

Z's timer dings. "Okay. I've got to run."

"Want me to come over later and water flowers?"

"They're not ready yet. But I can come visit you and see the beginnings of your fish market."

He smiles despite himself. "Not my vineyard?"

"We'll get to it," she says. Then she calls, "Goodbye!"

His grandma calls, "Bye, dear. Have a good afternoon."

Link has to hold himself back from saying something sappy. "See you soon."

Z hangs up. Link places markers for the temporary position of Leopold's house on a stretch of unused beach. He sits in a nearby beach chair and starts work on a pattern for a a lifted deck.

"Poor thing," his grandma says, not looking up from her knitting. "You've got it bad."

Link flops his head back and groans.

#

Every single Zora in the Domain tests positive. Every. Single. One. 

There's no research to back up her assumption, but Zelda assumes it's because they all share the same communal pools of water. They need to stop using communal pools (which would go against fundamental tenants of Zora culture and community). They need to drain the pools (which is blasphemous) and clean them (even though the Zora claim the snails do a fine job). Clearly, this is what they need to do, but they won't and Zelda's father fears that even if that happened, the Zora would move to the river, and then the virus could be washed downstream. 

Towards Castle Town.

There's a massive argument in parliament, but Zelda's father sends soldiers to block the road, breaking three treaties. Zelda breathes a sigh of relief even as her heart breaks when not a single soul tries to come out. A few Zora who were outside the Domain when they closed the border try to get in. They are sent away.

But the fear in this situation is a strange one, because the Zora don't need their lungs to survive. Those whose lungs have deteriorated to the point where they are completely non-functional have simply become aquatic. They now live in the huge pools in the Domain. They're in terrible pain, but they don't die unless the sickness gets bad enough that their livers fail or they have a stroke. The Zora healers are good at not letting it get that bad.

The healers are another mystery. Zelda knows from reports that the healers start every day by healing each other. They then see Zora after Zora after Zora in a grueling production line. They work sixteen hour shifts. Either their healing can't remove the virus completely, or the healing also removes all the antibodies against the virus, because a few weeks later, the healed Zora are sick again. So many people have it that it seems those that get cured catch it again immediately. 

But they really need to send in a team of Hylian Doctors to figure out what's happening and what needs to be done. The video calls with the Zora healers just aren't enough to understand why any of this is happening, and the Zora medical professionals are completely unprepared for a sickness that they can't wave their hands and it disappears. They need testing and clean suits and a system to isolate people.

Zelda doesn't know how to send a team into that kind of danger.

But that's what she's doing today. She has a stack of applications--doctors who volunteered--who want to go in and help. She has to pick six of them. And potentially send them to their deaths.

"This is what it is to rule," her father said, pressing the stack of applications into her hands. "Do it." He has even more apocalyptic things to deal with today.

She vetoes everyone with children and immediately green-lights the only Goron applicant before her alarm goes off for her break. She desperately needs to hear Link's voice.

He's not active on his island when she starts up her game so she sends him a text. "You around?"

She hears nothing. She tries to distract herself by looking through her catalogue, looking for items that would be good for Link's fish market. She might be willing to donate a few things she won from the last fishing tourney.

Five minutes pass, and it's rude for her to expect him to be there for every one of her breaks. She's far too strong of a person to be this needy, and he does have a life of his own. Except that she knows for a fact that he doesn't. She should tell him who she is and then inform him that it's his patriotic duty to play Animal Crossing with her. And send her sexy pictures of himself. Wait. No. Not that.

Or maybe yes that.

Eight minutes pass. She groans and calls him. It takes one whole ring for him to pick up. Before he says anything, she demands, “Where are you? I have seven minutes left!”

“I can’t get Uma’s sound to work! I'm on a voice call with her on the other line, but I can't get her hooked into the group chat.”

His grandmother's knitting group. The ladies always have trouble with some aspect of the group video chats.

She drags a swear word out into a groan, then says, “Patch me in.”

“What?”

“I want to talk to her, patch me through.”

“Oh. I—How do I do that?”

“Goddess save me.” She gives him clipped instructions on how to open a settings menu on his slate and enable multi-line calling. Within thirty seconds, she’s switching into a polite and compassionate voice and saying, “Hello, am I speaking to Uma?”

“Yes?”

“I’m Z, a friend of Link’s. I work in IT, and I want to help you get your audio set up.”

“Oh. Umm—”

“Have you tried relaunching the group chat application and this time click that you accept microphone usage.”

“Hold on…Let me…Oh, yes. Link just had me do that. I'll try again…”

“...Any luck?”

"She's back up on the wall screen," Link reports. 

"Can anyone hear me?" Uma asks. The question doesn't come in stereo. Link and Zelda are the only ones who can hear her.

“Alright," Zelda says. "I need you to go into your system preferences." She guides her in a clear, crisp voice through a complicated set of drop down menus to eventually turn the microphone on automatically whenever she connects to a group chat. When that doesn’t work, Z has her check her volume settings, and suddenly Uma’s voice is blasting through the wall screen so loud the speakers shriek.

“A mid-level volume is probably best,” Z says, her voice coming back to her in an echo through Link's wall screen. Uma has her on speaker phone.

Uma makes the adjustments and says, “How’s that?”

Link’s grandma cheers.

“Now, I’m not going to remember any of that,” Uma says.

“The settings should stay the way they are. Just don’t change them.”

“I don’t know how they got changed in the first place! _I_ didn't change them.”

“Sure, Uma,” says one of the elderly women.

“Who’s she talking to?” another woman asks.

Link’s grandma hisses in a carrying whisper, “Link’s lady friend.”

"Lucy?"

Lucy is one of the villagers on Link's Animal Crossing island. She's a pig in a pink dress.

“Z,” Link's grandma corrects, no longer pretending to whisper.

“She’s real?”

"But she sounds so elegant!"

“Alright," Zelda says, "if that’s all settled, I’m going to go now. It was a pleasure speaking with you."

“Thank you, dear!”

Zelda hangs up, then glares at her slate until Link calls her back.

"Hey," he says. His voice is close. Warm. There's a hint of a smile that makes her stomach clench.

“They robbed me of my break," she says. "I’ve been _robbed_.”

“You're amazing. Thank you. That was just...wow.”

“I didn’t get your opinion on the flowers I put in! They look awful. I need you to tell me they’re beautiful and talk me out of digging them all up."

"I'm sure they're gorgeous. Everything you do is perfect." 

"You haven't even seen them!"

"Let me make it up to you."

“Don’t you use your sexy voice on me when my break's almost over! How dare you!”

"Sorry, I didn't mean--You think my voice is sexy?"

"I am having a terrible day!"

“Ah. Can I use my sexy voice on you when your next break starts?”

"You'd better!" She huffs. "I've had a horrible morning, and then the knitting group stole my break, and I didn't get to talk to you, and my flowers look awful!"

"You didn't get to talk to me and my sexy voice. You want me to record something? You can play it while I'm not around."

She calls his bluff with an imperious, "Yes. That’s an excellent idea.”

"Should I include sexy pictures?"

"Only if they're tasteful."

He gasps dramatically. “I would never send you distasteful pictures.”

“Hmm. I wouldn’t know. You haven’t sent me anything yet.”

“Good point. So will this be a, um, reciprocal thing?”

“No. I didn’t leave you waiting.”

“That’s fair.”

It’s really not. She should put a stop to this. Tell him she’s joking. Tell him he doesn’t owe her anything. Tell him she likes him. Tell him she doesn’t want to ruin what they have.

Her alarm sounds.

The words sit on the tip of her tongue.

“You’ve got this, Z,” he says. “Whatever it is, you’re going to handle it.”

She breathes a sigh of relief. “I’m sorry, Link, I’m just stressed.”

“I know. We’ll get through it soon.”

“Okay.”

“Talk this evening?”

“Yes, please.”

He laughs and she wants to roll up in it like a blanket. “Bye.”

She hangs up, closes her eyes, and breathes. Then she closes Animal Crossing and goes back to her desk and the stack of papers there.

She’s not expecting Link to send her anything. A few hours later, she's in a video meeting with the infectious disease task force when her slate pings with a text message. 

"Sorry it took so long. I had to find a good background."

Her face turns bright red, and she thanks the Goddess that her slate simply notifies her that she's received five photos instead of displaying the photos themselves.

"Your Highness?"

"Yes. Apologies."

She holds it together quite well considering. She holds her head high, doesn't glance at her slate again, and doesn't think about what's waiting for her. She's determined to be professional until her next break, at which point she turns off her wall screen, sets her slate into private mode, and takes a seat on her office sofa.

She's unsure how she should sit. She doesn't want to be too comfortable. She doesn't want to be too prim.

She's ridiculous. Taking a deep breath, she opens the pictures.

And chokes on a laugh.

It's Link's Animal Crossing avatar. He's custom made himself a shirt to make it look like he's shirtless, complete with exaggerated muscles and a pair of navy boxer briefs. The illusion only works from the front, and isn't the best even then. He poses in front of a sunset wall. He poses in front of a city skyline at night. He poses sitting on a moon chair lit only by stars. 

They are decidedly not sexy and the funniest thing she's seen in days. She curls over her slate and laughs at the one of him in a jungle wiping sweat from his forehead. Her stomach aches, it's so absurd.

She swipes to the final image and stops. It's Link. Actual Link. One of his hands is holding out his slate to take the picture. The other is rubbing the back of his neck as he gives her a bashful look. His eyes are a riveting shade of blue, and his green T-shirt pulls tight at his shoulders.

She's not laughing anymore.

She jumps at the ping of a text message. "Are you running late? Because there's a tax now for running late. I don't make the rules."

She calls him.

And keeps swiping back to his picture.


	3. Chapter 3

"What are you eating?" Z asks.

"Croissant," Link mumbles, his mouth full of pastry. Until right this second, he thought he was being good about not sounding like he's eating.

"Where did you get a croissant?"

He swallows before saying, "I made it."

"Really?"

"Yep." He licks butter off his thumb and steps out of the airport. "Where are you?"

She lets out a frustrated exhale. "The Temple of Time."

Z's island has a serious snag. Namely, that she has to rely on her villagers to put furniture in the right places inside their homes. Usually, she can give up control enough to allow the animals to just have the furniture strewn around, shelves against incorrect walls and lamps set on the floor instead of on tables. It's the ambiance that counts. 

The notable exception to this is the Temple of Time, which is inside Blaire the squirrel's house. 

Link finds Z there, standing kind of in the middle of everything, her face red and huffy with frustration. Blarie sits in one of the pews, reading a book.

He does an excellent job of not laughing. Much better than he did not sounding like he was eating. "It's going to be alright,” he says.

"Look at this! This is a disaster! It's blasphemous, Link. Blasphemous."

"She's a squirrel."

"Don't they have some programming to at least set things in logical places? This is a fever dream."

"Well, I see it too, but you should probably still get tested."

Yesterday, the room looked bad. There's a runner down the middle, but Blaire had it set horizontally across the room instead of vertically from the door. Z gave Blaire four benches which Blaire put against the walls instead of in rows. Z gave Blare a huge Goddess statue that she got from Gulliver, which Blaire put _facing_ the _wrong_ wall. Z could not get Blaire to put the custom-made stained glass windows in reasonable spots. Instead of in a straight row next to each other, Din is way higher than any of the others and front and center, and Nayru is hidden on the wall by the door. The sage of water is hidden behind the Goddess statue, so the two are staring at each other with their noses touching. 

Z had the brilliant plan to give Blaire a pipe organ. The real pipe organ in the Temple of Time is hidden in an alcove, so you can't see it, but Z had a meticulous diagram of how the room would _have_ to be structured if she gave the squirrel furniture of that size. The pews would _have_ to face the same direction. The Goddess statue would _have_ to be shifted from the position she was in. Z took a photo of her diagrams and sent them to him, and instead of telling her that she looked like a crazy person, he asked how work was going and she'd sent him a link to a statement made by the Yiga, saying the virus was a sign of Hyrule’s undoing, a sign that the Goddess had turned her back on them. They'd hacked several social media platforms so the speech pops up automatically. She spent all morning trying to beef up security while a team of useless people tried to take it down.

"The Yiga aren’t sick. They're isolationists who wear masks 24/7." She groaned. "I just...I need the Temple of Time to not be a disaster.”

But today, suffice to say, the pipe organ didn't solve either the mess of a room or the Yiga problem.

The organ is now the main feature of the room, front and center and not even against a wall. The Goddess statue is still in the corner facing the sage of water. To make room for the organ, Blaire took one of the pews, turned it so it's facing the one against the right wall, and then shoved them together to make a kind of bed-thing that you can't get into. Another of the pews is now, for some reason, in the middle of the room, facing the door.

Blaire turns a page in her book.

"At least the organ is blocking Din," he says.

"This is the final straw," she says. "I'm kicking her off the island. I'll make the temple entirely outdoors. I don't care that I'll lose the Goddess statue and the pipe organ." From the cracks in her voice, she cares about that a lot. "I'll just use something else until I rotate through all of Gulliver's prizes. And I don't need the organ anyway. I can wait until next year to get another."

“Oh, Z. I’m sorry.”

“Why is she doing this?” she whines, and it’s adorable.

“Because she’s a squirrel.”

“A snotty squirrel. If she was at least nice about it, that’d be different.”

"Would a croissant help?"

"Are they any good?"

"Pretty good," he says. "Fantastic for a first attempt. I want to try again and do it better, because I think I learned this time, but I need to decide if my goal is to bake everything in the cookbook or to bake a couple things really well in the cookbook, because I don't think I should try to do both."

"Bake things well. I'm sure that book is mostly full of ridiculous things no one would want to eat, much less be willing to waste your flour ration."

He takes another crunching bite and then hums around the buttery flavor.

"That's uncalled for."

"Hey, I offered to let you try one."

"How would that work?"

"I could put it on the ground by your front door, ring the bell, and run away."

"Ah."

"So no to that."

"I'm afraid so."

He takes another bite, and moans even louder. "You are missing out. It just...melts in my mouth."

"I'm having a bad enough day."

“I wish I could hug you.”

"My friend Purah at work pitched a hug-bot idea yesterday. A kind of virtual reality device, where you wear a motion sensor jacket to control a robot in your friend's house and they would wear a jacket that controls a robot in your house and you would hug each other. We all agreed that it was the creepiest idea we'd ever heard."

"Yeah, that'd get misused immediately."

"People would punch each other."

"...Right."

He goes to the Animal Crossing forum and starts to write a post, but then thinks better of it. 

"Ugh! I can't look at this any more,” she says. “I'm going to work on the pylons. Want to come?"

Just like the real Castle Town, the northern part of Z's town is a system of rivers and islands. In the center, where the castle should be, is her house, which is really a few houses from dummy accounts put together into courtyards and guard stations and a hedge maze. But she's never quite satisfied with the way the rivers are laid out, and she's yet to be satisfied with the ancient Sheikah pylons, which should jut up like teeth to encircle the castle.

Right now, the pylons are just large stones that look nothing like the massive structures form a curse long past. 

"If I make them with terraforming and ramps, that would look good wouldn't it? You're not planning on getting rid of your cliff-side rivers, are you?"

"You're about to get rid of all your cliff-side rivers."

"Yes."

"You can use my rivers to fish."

She sing songs, "Thank you!" then stops in front of the first stone and enthusiastically explains her plan.

Link switches over to the forum and makes himself a new account, one Z doesn't know about. He types up his post again. _Does anyone have a spare Goddess Statue or pipe organ I could buy or trade for?_

It occurs to him that if Z found this post, she would know it was him regardless of his fake identity, so he adds a couple of items to the list. _Does anyone have a spare barrel, Goddess Statue, any sporting fish models, or a pipe organ I could buy or trade for?_ This makes it even more obvious that it's him.

 _If anyone has any of these items to spare, I'd love to trade or buy them from you._ He pulls up a list of furniture available in the game and picks a dozen at random. He makes sure to put a couple Bunny Day items at the beginning. Z despised Bunny Day and won't read the rest of the list once she sees them. Brilliant!

Z has on her work helmet, and is hauling the ground into a column with a shovel. The work helmet looks extra silly with her silver flapper dress and pumps. 

"Okay," she says, "If I put a ramp here—but which ramp? Is there a black ramp? Can I put custom designs on ramps? I'll deal with that in a moment. I know I can put a design on top, and then put panels on the side...Yes, I think this might work. Much better than my last attempt at least."

Within five minutes, someone has offered to give him a toaster for 3,000 bells, and someone has offered to trade him the Bunny Day items for 30 Nook miles tickets, 4 rare recipes, and 750,000 bells. He takes a seat on a tree stump near where Z works and private messages the toaster person, saying he's actually only interested in the Goddess Statue and the pipe organ to surprise his friend, and the rest of the items are just so she doesn't know it's him. But thanks anyway for not asking for an arm and a leg.

"Ha! Good luck!" they say.

The Bunny Day person is much less forgiving of Link wasting their time. Their message in response to his explanation is ASCII art of a raised middle finger.

Someone messages him offering a pipe organ, and he sits up straighter to reply. 10 Nook miles tickets and 100,000 bells. He should really just time travel and get one himself, but he is a billionaire in-game, and he supposes that one of the perks to that is not having to time travel. He'll need to farm Nook Miles though. 

He's just writing back when a new message pops up and he panics that he's ruined the whole thing, because it's Z messaging him. Did he _use_ the fake account he just made, or did he go through all that work only to post as himself? Has she realized that he's not really paying attention to her? He makes himself calm down, and reads her message.

"Hello. I have the toaster, the antique chair, and the loom in my catalogue. I can order them today and trade you tomorrow for their sell price. Unless you have second generation red roses."

Link lets himself breathe. She doesn't know it's him. And also she's offering a really good trade rate, because she's a good, kind person.

He feels a little light headed writing back to her. "Wow, thanks. But I'm actually only interested in the Bunny Day stuff. I'm trying to surprise my girlfriend, but I don't want her to see this post and know immediately that it's me, you know?"

"That's sweet," she says. "I'm sure your girlfriend will be delighted. But I think she'll know it's you. If you really wanted to fool her, you'd put the items you're asking for towards the bottom of the list.” He feels like his soul has left his body. “If you find anyone offering a Goddess Statue, send them my way though. I'm looking for one. Thanks!"

"Z?" he asks. 

"Hmm?"

"...How's that custom design going?" 

She looks up from her slate and plops her custom design down on the ground. It's a black square with turquoise lines like constellations. "Maybe I'll have the black be a bit textured instead of a solid black. With some shading, I might be able to make it look more as if it’s the correct shape. And they won't glow in the night, which is a disappointment, but I don't believe there's a way to make that happen."

"Could you light them from underneath?"

She gasps so loudly that he nearly drops his slate, and then she's running toward resident services to buy a floor light and a panel and a ramp.

#

She's really not sure how to reciprocate any of the kindness Link is showing her. When she thinks of the lengths he goes to, it makes her bright red with a mix of euphoria and guilt.

He's currently racking up Nook miles and trying to pretend he's not. He pretending that he just really wants to charge to the beach, grab five shells, charge to Nook's Cranny and sell them, check his Nook slate, run off and catch the first three bugs he finds, check his Nook slate. She wants to tell him that it's not worth it, and she'll get her own Goddess statue, but that would be saying that she knows what he's doing, when he's gone to such lengths to keep it a secret. It's just going to be one of those things they don't talk about.

It makes her heart flutter, thinking about how much work he's putting in to making her happy.

This morning, she's recording her weekly children‘s address. In her first address, back when they had no idea that there would be more, she read a picture book about germs, explained how to cough into your elbow, and how to wash your hands. In her second address, she read a picture book about personal space and explained social distancing with an extremely large hula-hoop to show that she had to stay six feet from her assistant and from the man behind the camera. The hula-hoop was so awkward to work with that it was, of course, a huge hit with the kids. When school was moved to virtual learning and every student was given a Sheikah Slate, she showed them how to join video lectures, and then she showed them her "favorite games," which secretly taught math and coding and reading. She did one about wearing masks, where she and her assistant took turns wearing their masks incorrectly and pressing buttons that made a horrible buzz sound when they did so. That was also a hit with the kids, but less a hit with parents who are irritated that their children imitate the buzzing noise if they ever let their mask slip below their nose. 

Recently, she's just been reading picture books about being lonely. Or about being bored. Or about loss. It's gotten a bit depressing, and she really needs to speak with her staff to come up with something fun. A nation wide window decorating challenge. An essay contest. A dance off. 

Today, she's reading the story of a turtle who's lonely because his best friend moved away. The turtle is very sad, but then he comes up with fun activities to do on his own and then his friend writes him a letter that makes him feel a thousand times better.

"I'm feeling lonely lately," she admits as she closes the book. "I used to visit so many people every day. I'd go to elementary schools and fire stations and research labs and museums, and I'd meet so many interesting people. But now I haven't left the castle in six weeks. Even though I still go to work, now most of the people I work with are working from home, so I only see them on video calls. And it's not the same, is it? It's different talking to your friends or your grandparents or your teachers through your slate. I don't know about you, but it makes me tired."

When she first submitted this script, she went on to talk about how she could really use a hug, but she's not allowed to touch anyone. But her staff pointed out that she's already told the kids that she's allowed to hug her father, and does she really want to get into "he's not a hugger"? Does she really want all the parents who watch this to hear her say that the king is cold?

How about she says she wants to hug her best friend and can't? That's true, and kids can relate to it.

PR got hold of that, demanded to know who her best friend was, then sent the script to the writing team, who made edits. What they came up with makes her both thrilled and uncomfortable. They explained that even if it's a lie, it'll fuel the gossip mill for a while, and provide a much needed, frivolous distraction. 

"I'm sad today, because I don't get to hug my boyfriend. We talk all the time, but we can't be in the same room. It's not the same." She straightens her spine. "But talking through our slates is much better than nothing. Just like the turtle was so happy to get a letter from his friend, I'm so happy every time I get to hear his voice. This won't last forever, and very soon, we'll get to see our friends again. So here is your challenge for this week: I want you to reach out to at least three friends that you haven't spoken to lately. And I want you to think of different ways to do that. Did you know that there's a program on the Sheikah network that lets you get a group together and play Go-Fish? Just like the turtle’s friend, you can send a letter in the mail. You can leave a message for your neighbor in front of your house with sidewalk chalk. Be creative. Reach out, even if you can't hug. Let me know what you do, and I'll see you next week."

PR tells her that it went well. She did a fantastic job looking love struck. There are reports of kids doing weird, cute things to say hi to each other, and there's a thrilled surge of interest in dissecting her personal life. Mission accomplished, she supposes.

She's feeling good when she flops down on her sofa for her break and calls Link.

"Hello," she chirps.

"Hey."

She blinks. His voice sounds...odd.

"Are you alright?" she asks.

"I'm fine."

"Is—Did something happen?" Her immediate thought is that his grandmother is sick, and her chest tightens with fear.

"Everything's fine. I'm just...busy. I probably won't be able to be around later, and I have to go in a minute. But I have something for you. Do you...want to come over here, or...I could just drop it by your airport?"

"Come over. I'll meet you." She runs for the airport. "You have me worried. What's going on?"

"Nothing. It's really stupid."

"I like to hear about stupid things."

He laughs, but not as if anything is funny. It breaks her heart a bit. Then he says, "The princess has a boyfriend."

She stops so fast in front of the airport that she skids. "...Excuse me?"

"I told you it's dumb."

"You...Wait, you're...you have a crush on the princess?"

"That's not weird," he says defensively. "Everyone does."

"But..." It feels as if a hole opens in her chest.

He steps out of the airport and digs through his pockets, dropping two wrapped packages on the ground and stepping back. "I got these for you," he says.

She doesn't move to pick them up. She just stares at him. The resting smile on her avatar is far too chipper for the situation before her, which she can sense is spiraling out of her control. 

“You wrapped them.”

“Yeah.”

"That almost make it seem like you have a crush on me," she says.

"You know I do."

She sucks in a breath.

"We both know I do, but we don't talk about it. It's one of the many things we don't talk about, and I was okay with that, but I'm not anymore. I'm not okay hearing about your life from the news." He turns and heads back for the airport. "Bye, Z."

"Wait! Wait, you can't just drop that on me and leave!"

"I'm not going to stay and keep getting led on."

"I wasn't leading you on. I thought you wouldn't be interested if all my baggage was involved."

"When that baggage includes a _boyfriend_ you've never mentioned before—"

"I was talking about you!"

"...What?"

She groans. "I just called you my boyfriend, because that's easier to explain than that you're the guy I'm hung up on and haven't met in real life and who might not even know who I am. And you started it! You called me your girlfriend when you told me that nonsense about Bunny Day!”

"...Oh." 

"I shouldn't have done it, but the press team thought it would give people something to be excited about, and I didn't even consider that you would hear about it. How did you hear about it?"

"I watch the children's addresses." He sounds dazed.

"You watch the children's addresses?"

"That's not weird either. You taught me how to wash my hands, which I've apparently done incorrectly my whole life. And I like to see you."

"You like to see me." Her heart swells. 

"Of course."

She has to swallow down the emotion rising from her chest and welling in her eyes.

"I stalk your restaurant's site on the Sheikah net," she blurts. "There's a picture of you, and I look at it."

"You look at it."

"I put a site blocker on it for a while to improve my productivity, but then I gave up and removed it."

That startles a laugh from him. "You're a dork."

" _You're_ a dork. How many Nook miles did you raise in the last few days."

"A lot. People are pirates."

“...Link?"

"Yeah."

"If I sent you a NDA...would you sign it?"

"Yes."

"You shouldn't answer so quickly. Really think on it and—"

"I like you. A lot."

"I like you too. A lot."

"Okay?”

"Yeah?"

"Hell yeah."

She laughs.

"Send me your NDA and open your presents," he says, and she's so excited to hear the smile in his voice.

She hurries forward and picks them up. "I think I know what they are," she teases.

"Well, at least I tried to surprise you."

"You did. It's so cute."

She sets the Goddess statue right on the end of the dock, where she appears in all her glory, smiling and sunlit. "Look at her! Thank you so much! She's beautiful!"

"You're beautiful."

She groans, and drops her slate to cover her grin in her hands. “You’re such a sap!”

"Can I send you croissants now?" he asks.

"Yeah, you can ring my doorbell and run away."

"Do you have a doorbell?"

"No."

"But, video chat? That's a thing now?"

"That," she says, "is definitely a thing now." She gasps. "Let's go put trash in Blaire's yard!"


	4. Maybe it's a Date

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gets spicy

Z's been helping with the royal addresses as they approach the peak. The list of names is simply too long for the king to read in its entirety in one go, so they stand side-by-side, six feet apart and swap off every twenty-five names. According to Z, they're also reading the lists faster, because the king's slow, weighty pauses after each name are now untenable. There was a huge fight about it over a video call. 

After the royal address, Z holds a video conference with the team of doctors in the Zora's Domain every night when they're done with work, and her day isn't done until that's over. Tonight, that's at 10:15.

She calls Link from her office and talks as she strides through the hallways to her room. She greets him with a deep sigh. "Okay! I'm done."

"What's the damage?"

They have a system now where for each of the country's "outstanding achievements" or each "horrible nightmare" Zelda has to face at work, Link has to place an item in his vineyard. He has a plan that he thinks will actually look pretty good, where he's going to set a pink hydrangea bush and a lattice fence in an alternating pattern.

"This morning, the Rito thought they had their first case. They were in a panic about how it got in, and we rushed in a helicopter delivery with testing supplies and protective equipment. Turns out it was a case of over-reacting to seasonal allergies. Embarrassing for that one dramatic Rito, who's still insisting that, no, he definitely has it, and a rather expensive mistake, but good news in the end."

"I'm not sure that counts."

"Link. I sent a _helicopter_."

"Okay. Fine. One grape bush." He's actually already bought all the bushes he needs, and he's crafted all the fences. They're currently hanging out in storage. He could install everything in about two minutes, but this way Z gets to feel like shes getting away with something, and he gets to pretend to be grumpy about it.

"Then I recorded an amazingly strange interview about quarantine fashion. You'll get to see it in a few days, and then you too will want to let your roots show as an act of patriotism."

"...Your roots are showing?"

"No. Unfortunately I have but one hair color to give for my country."

"Me too. I feel left out now."

"You should. This is going to be all the rage. We talked about messy edges, and then I gave myself a manicure on national television. I gave all my fingernails blue tips, because I am in solidarity with health care workers, and every time I look at them, I'll remember to make decisions that help lessen their workload. PR thinks it will be the most massive fashion trend I've ever set."

"Okay. So...a fence."

"That's two fashion trends! I deserve two fences!"

"What's going on with the Zora?"

"Excellent progress. I told you that they finally found some younger Zora volunteers, who were willing to isolate after their appointments with the healers. The team has set up temporary, single occupancy pools just outside the city for them. They've found that even three days after the healing they're still testing negative, AND--just as I suspected--they're testing negative for antibodies."

"So..."

"The virus is gone. But all protection from the virus is gone too. They'll catch it again immediately if they go back into the Domain. But this means, if we can relocate people away from the city as they're healed, we can cut down on the number of people who have it and keep those that have recovered healthy. Making that happen is an issue for tomorrow, but for now I'm very pleased."

" _That_ gets you two fences."

"Ha! Excellent!"

"And I suppose you get a bush for the royal address."

She sighs loudly.

He coaxes her with, "If your projections are right and the peak is tomorrow, I'll put in all the paths to celebrate. Deal?"

"Yes, when several hundred people die tomorrow, I will earn a custom path."

"That's not what we're celebrating, and you know it. Don't be like that."

"Ah ha! I'm to my room!"

He lets her change the subject. "Your house is too big."

Her voice is suddenly clearer as she pops off her mask, then immediately a little worse as she puts him on speaker phone. "I like to think that it successfully puts distance between my work life and home life."

"If you say so."

"I'm cleaning my slate now, so it might sound funny."

"You clean your slate?"

"Of course. I've been touching it all day. Do you not clean your slate?!"

"I don't go outside."

She hums. There's muffled thumping and squeaking from her side of the call. "I wish they weren't so textured. It's hard to get in all the little cracks."

There's the sound of running water and Z humming the Song of Storms. Link lets a sappy smile spread across his face as he leans back and listens. "You sound pretty."

She laughs. "You dork. Let me just get changed."

There's soft shuffling on her end, and he tries not to picture her. Stepping out of her shoes. Unbuttoning her shirt. He holds himself back from asking what she's wearing and does a decent job controlling himself until there's the loud, distinct sound of a zipper. All the way down the back of one of her tight dresses. He could drag his lips all the way down the length of her spine. 

His head thunks back against the headboard, and he grips his slate tight in his hands. He is pathetic and quarantine has done terrible things to his brain and his body.

"Okay," she says. "Where are you sitting? I want to picture it."

He shakes himself and takes a selfie, mainly showing that he's alone and wearing headphones, but also showing that he's on his bed in the guest room, sitting with his back to the headboard and using his grandma's goofy back-rest pillow with the little arm rests. It doesn't work super well, and he always ends up sinking down in a lazy sprawl until he's nearly lying down with his neck at a weird angle. But for now, he's mostly sitting up straight. (It helps that he shoves himself up to take the selfie.)

Thirty seconds later, she sends a selfie of her own. Her bed is ginormous and has about a hundred pillows, and she has one of them propped up against the others long-ways so it's kind of sitting up and kind of sinking down into a lazy sprawl. She's snuggled up against its side, and looks immensely pleased with herself.

Link swallows the tightness in his throat.

Her hair is rumpled, like she's run her fingers through it too many times. There's a red line across the bridge of her nose where her mask has pressed all day. Her sleep shirt is too big for her and slipping down one shoulder.

"Din on fire." He's done for.

He grabs his sleep pillow, pulls it so it's snuggled up to his chest and side, and sends her a photo.

His slate pings for a video chat, and a message pops up that a program called "Guardian 5.8" will block all recording attempts of any kind. 

He does not mind.

Z beams up at him, her cheek pressed to her pillow, her slate held up where his face would be if they were actually snuggling. He lowers his own slate to his chest, so the angles are right, and it's almost-- _almost_ \-- like he's holding her. Almost like his arm is tightening around her instead of his pillow, almost like her cheek rests on his chest. 

Her smile widens. "Hi."

"Hey."

She props her slate up and wraps her arm around him with a contented sigh.

"Goddess, you're gorgeous."

She twists to prop her chin on his chest and her face twitches into a confused smile. 

“I want to touch your face," he says. "Is that weird?”

“I want to boop your nose, so no.”

He boops his own nose for her, and she giggles. 

Maybe it's subconscious, but she's dragging a finger up and down the center of his chest as she smiles dreamily up at him. Maybe she doesn't notice, but he most definitely does. All his muscles tighten in anticipation, and _that_ she picks up on, or maybe it's the sudden heat in the look he's giving her. She looks down at her hand, then back up at him. Hesitantly, she turns her face to plant the briefest kiss against his chest. Chaste and simple.

His breath catches.

"Okay?" she whispers.

"Very okay."

She kisses him again. Lingering this time. She closes her eyes like she's imagining it, and he's about to do the same when her leg slides up into view. He can't look away from the expanse of bare skin, because she's either wearing very short shorts or no shorts at all.

"I feel silly," she says. "You should talk to me."

“I want to hold your thigh.”

“Oh?”

“Rub my thumb in. Pull you closer.”

“Would you like a better view?”

His face heats. “Yes.”

She shifts on top of him and sits up to straddle his waist, and, yeah, there’s no way her shorts are that short. He can’t tear his eyes from her legs, the way they disappear under the hem of her sleep shirt, which advertises a bicycle race around Rito City. He reaches to touch her, but she’s not there.

Slowly, she bunches up her shirt, pulling it tight to show her silhouette, then lifting it enough to show her navel and a simple pair of white underwear.

He groans, and his head flops back against the headboard again as he drags his hands into his hair. He crosses his arms on top of his head and squeezes his ears with his biceps and bites his lip before he manages to look at her again. 

No one’s ever looked at him with such laser focus before, with such undisguised possessiveness. It's like she could reach through her slate and dig her fingernails into his scalp, sink her teeth into his lip. His breath turns shallow, and he can't take it anymore.

They both move at the same time.

"You're so beautiful," he says.

"Say more things like that."

"Want to smell your hair. Bet it smells like sunshine."

"I want you to kiss me all over."

"I'd start with your neck. Your high collars should be a crime."

"I'll look into...into legislation."

“I’m...not going to last long.”

“That’s okay,” she gasps. “You have to show me my vineyard.”

“ _Your_ vineyard?”

“ _Mine_.”

"Want my hands inside your frumpy bicycle shirt. I'd hold you so tight."

"I--Oh, Link, slow down, slow--I want to move with you."

"Ah. Goddess." 

"Just--"

"Z!"

"Ah!"

"..."

When the spots clear from his eyes, his slate has listed to an odd angle. He's fuzzy and sweating and wants to curl around her and tuck her close. She snuggles up against his side, boneless and catching her breath. She looks up at him and grins. "Hi."

"Hey." He grins back at her, and she’s all warm and soft and relaxed. "I wish I could kiss you." It's actually painful that he can't.

She hugs him tighter. Her eyes turn sad. "I know."

They stare at each other a moment. "There's hair in your face, and I want to brush it away."

She does it for him.

"Want to see how your vineyard is coming along?"

"Yes! I'm so excited!"

He loads up animal crossing, and she moves her slate into a more comfortable position on his chest. With her not looking at him, he holds his slate up over his head.

He grabs the stuff he needs out of storage and meets her at the airport. When she arrives, she's in a frumpy T-shirt with tiny bikes on the front. She's not wearing pants. 

Link laughs so hard he drops his slate on his face.

#

"Looks like _somebody_ had a good date," Purah says as Zelda walks into the tech lab.

Shehas no idea how Purah picked up on her good mood so fast. "It wasn't a date. We played Animal Crossing."

"Is that what the kids are calling it these days?"

"He's building me a vineyard." And perhaps Zelda could smile a bit less. Her cheeks are starting to ache.

"Gross."

"What did you want to show me?"

"I bet you two just stared into each other's eyes and argued about who's prettier."

Robbie doesn't look away from his wall screen, but announces, "I'm prettier."

"I'm prettier!" Purah shouts back.

Clearly, the scientists need to discuss this before they get to the point, so Zelda grants them some patience. She's in a good mood after all. "I can't believe you're mocking me for having a wholesome time."

Robbie snorts rather loudly.

"That's uncalled for," she says.

"I didn't say anything."

"Spare us your lies about wholesomeness," Purah says. She makes a circle motion with her hand to encompass Zelda's general bearing. "It's obvious. It's Peak Day. You're supposed to be somber. You're wearing a black dress. If you don't want king and country to know about your love life, you'll wipe that smile off your face."

"The king knows."

Purah gives Zelda a look over the top of her red-rimmed glasses. 

"He knows...of him," Zelda amends.

"But not details."

"Oh, certainly not details."

"No one wants details," Robbie says.

" _Everyone_ wants details," Purah shouts back. "Let me see his picture again." She grabs a long claw arm that she once used as a joke to get books from high shelves because she's so short, but now used to get within people's personal space. She tries to grab Zelda's slate, but Zelda jerks it out of her reach and twists away, clutching it to her chest.

Purah huffs and gives up. Or seems to. It might be a trap. "You are the least fun boss."

"Being fun is not in my job description. Now give me good news."

"You can't handle our good news. Snap!"

Zelda perks. "What happened?"

Robbie swivels in his chair and flicks his fingers against the screen of his slate, sending everything to the wall screen in front of her. He gives her a moment to parse the chart, then swipes to a graph. Then another graph. Then a table.

"Wait. Does this--"

"Yes!" Purah shouts.

"It...works?"

"It works!"

Robbie amends, "It's too soon to say for certain."

Zelda stares at the graph. "What phase of human trials is this?" 

"Three!"

Zelda shakes her head in disbelief. "This isn't that data I saw last time." She pulls out her slate and flicks back to the last report about the vaccine. "These numbers are completely different from the phase 1 trials! And what does this graph even mean? Testing status? What--"

"That's because it's not a vaccine."

Zelda's head whips around. "Excuse me?"

"It's a cure! Show her, show her!"

Robbie switches to a video that looks as though it takes place in a petri dish. Glowing blue helper molecules converge on the globe of a virus. They cover it, then disband, moving on, leaving the virus deflated like an old kickball.

Zelda rears back.

Purah swells. "Let me introduce you to the first injectable resurrection technology!"

"I beg your pardon? Resurrection technology has insurmountable side effects. You can't give the entire country memory loss! Why are you even showing me this?"

"Ah! But you are looking at the fruition of four decades of research on programing and targeting the resurrection technology. Instead of 'fix everything you think is broken,' we've told it 'kill this one virus.'"

"And what does it do when it runs out of virus to kill?"

"Sits around and waits for more!" Purah snatches Robbie's slate from his hands and flicks to a new graph while Robbie whines. "These are healthy people who received the cure even though they tested negative. Minimal side effects. Improved immune response. No memory degradation."

"I--" Zelda can't look away. "Really?"

"Yes!"

"We _must_ give phase 3 a full six-month run," Robbie says. "We're talking about injecting this into every single person in Hyrule. We have to be absolutely sure. We don't even know everything the virus can do yet."

Zelda takes a deep breath, stretching out her lungs to make room for the hope tentatively rising in her chest. "How long will it take for a nation-wide roll out?"

Robbie throws his hands in the air, but Purah answers excitedly. "Three months if we open an additional pharmaceutical factory."

"And the trial will be complete in...?"

Robbie swipes his slate back from Purah's hands and checks his notes. "Four months, seventeen days."

Four months, seventeen days. She has to keep people safe for another four and a half months.

"Have you started Gerudo and Zora trials yet?"

"Not yet."

"We need to start those as soon as possible. Write a statement about your findings and send it to the PR team. Today. We can make an announcement this evening. I'll get your factory up and running so they're ready to deliver as soon as the trial ends."

"Well, that's a gamble," Robbie says. "What if it doesn't work?"

"Then the crown is out several million dollars, and I get to be irritable with Purah forever. But if this can be over in four months and seventeen days, it's a gamble I'm willing to take."

She turns to Purah. "How sure are you? Don't get my hopes up. Don't get the people's hopes up."

Purah is shockingly serious as she says, "My hand to the Goddess, this will work. The math it just...it all fits. It's _elegant_. Give me four and a half months."

Zelda nods slowly. She turns back to the screen. 

Keep her people safe. Keep their spirits up while she does so.

"I'll hold the infection rates down. I'll buy you time for the resurrection technology."


	5. Chapter 5

“I have a surprise,” Zelda announces as she plops down on her sofa. She's not sure how Link will take the surprise, and it's both thrilling and terrifying to the point where she's light headed.

“Is it deliverable?” Link asks. “Because I have a surprise too, but you have to come look.”

“It is.” His completely normal tone of voice is soothing. She waits at the airport for the dodos to “finish their paperwork” so she can take off. “They take so long,” she complains.

“Their safety checks are _mandatory_. They could be fired. They could lose their license. Where would Hyrule be if your plane went down?”

“Lost, I’m sure.” She flies over his island and gasps at what she sees. 

Link's vineyard is fairly simple, and Link finished it off for her in one go several weeks back when the Gerudo hit their peak only a few days after the Hylian provinces. The vineyard is surrounded by a stone wall, and there’s gardening equipment and some fans and tiki torches to keep the grapes the right temperature. It's funny how all-in Link has gone into pretending the grapes need to be cared for and harvested, especially since he pretends to be so grumpy about it. He _waters_ them. 

But she’s seen the vineyard already. What she hasn’t seen is the wine tasting area next door: the rows of barrels and the little tables and the polished bar, behind which sits row upon row of wine bottles. He's been putting it off, working on his fish market and making several failed attempts at a food truck instead.

“You finished it!”

He sing-songs, “I finished it!”

She runs through his town to meet him where he stands behind the bar as if ready to serve her. She laughs at takes a seat on one of the bar-stools, where he has an empty wine glass waiting for her.

“One of the nice things about the pictures of you slathered all over the Sheikah net drinking with your friends is that I now know that you prefer Cabernet Sauvignon." Sure enough, the bottles behind him have labels reminiscent of the brand the castle chefs always order for parties.  


“Don’t look at those pictures," she says. "They’re absurd.”

“They are. I mean, how do you drink wine when it’s not paired with a steak or something? That's the whole point."

"The point of drinking wine, sir, is that I can have something in my hand so I don't gesticulate wildly when I get too enthusiastic, _and_ so that I can be a bit tipsy while talking to boring people."

"Still weird without an entrée."

The first wave of people on the Sheikah net trying to figure out the identity of her boyfriend turned to pictures of her at parties in the months before the lock down. The names of aristocratic young men were floated, but none of them got much traction. Link seems to find everyone's poor guesses amusing.

The current prevailing theory on the princess' boyfriend is that she's dating a member of the royal guard as they are some of the few people she still sees in person. The Sheikah net is pouring over the names and faces of everyone in the guard. They're going through old clips of royal addresses and picking out who's off to the side and whether Zelda looks at them.

“You’re a good sport," she says. "I don’t deserve you.”

"You know who doesn't deserve me? Pipit. He has no idea how much I do for him."

She sighs. "Please stop defending the honor of the royal guard to fanatics on the Sheikah net. No one is going to listen to reason, and you're just egging them on by engaging with them."

"Nah. It's too late now. There was this woman who was also defending them and wasn't getting any traction either, and she was getting pretty frustrated. So I PMed her and calmed her down, and it turns out she's Pipit's girlfriend and not handling the rumors well. We're buds now."

Zelda groans.

From a combination of the Sheikah net's investigating and Zelda's behind the scenes information, Link now knows the names of everyone on her guard detail. He's even talked to a few of them while she had him on speaker phone. Since lock down, the guard are in rotating shelter units that live at the castle while on duty (two week quarantine, four weeks on duty, then six weeks off duty and back with their families). Link has decided that their sacrifices of not seeing their loved ones so they can keep Zelda safe, along with how much trouble he's causing for them, means that it's his responsibility to stand up for them whenever possible. "Whenever possible" means on the Sheikah network.

"Well, it's time to make friends with Robbie's fiancée now. He's the latest target, and he is not amused."

"Not even a little?"

"He barely spoke to me this morning."

"Huh. Well, give me her slate ID, I'll invite her the next time me and Karane play Dominion."

"I'm glad you're expanding out from Animal Crossing." 

"Hey, I also made macaroons this morning. Or, actually, more like very late last night. My sleep schedule is off."

"What prompted you to finish the wine bar?"

"Oh! I heard from a reliable source--"

"How reliable?"

"The king's press conference yesterday."

"Ahhhh." The tension returns to her shoulders.

"--That your numbers are down, and there have been less than 100 new cases a day for over a week."

"...Actually, that's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"You wanted to talk to me? Haha, you like me."

"I brought you these as...I guess they're bribes really." She hops up from her bar stool and drops three pieces of furniture on the ground. He races around the bar to pick them up and set them down again, so they turn from wrapped gifts into fish models: two tunas and a blue marlin.

"Ha! Yes! Pretend I'm kissing all over your face."

"You're welcome."

He snatches the models back up and charges off towards the beach. She has to chase after him.

"I should probably ask what you're trying to bribe me into, huh?"

"Probably."

"Okay. What are you trying to bribe me into?"

Her stomach clenches with anxiety. She takes a deep breath. "If the numbers stay low, we're going to Phase 2 on Monday. Allowing people to expand their shelter circles."

"You've got to be proud."

"Yes. I mean, we're still quite a few weeks from a cure--"

"Twelve weeks."

"Eleven weeks and six days--but it looks as though we _might_ get it under control before then, as long as we keep some restrictions in place."

"You're doing a great job, Z. But what does this have to do with me?" 

"Do...do you want to come over?"

There's a long pause. She finally catches up to him at his fish market, where he's standing stock-still in the middle of things. 

"What?"

Her face flushes, and she starts to ramble, "We're recommending that people still maintain distance and visit friends and family mostly outdoors with masks on, but we're also loosening guidelines for quarantining households, so if two sheltering units join together to make a unit that's twice as large, that's fine as long as everyone within the unit is accepting of the enlargement and all the risks taken by everyone in the group."

"I...What?"

She groans. "I want you to be one of the two people I'm allowed to hug. If you're comfortable with the risks involved in that, I want you to join my sheltering household."

"...You want me to...move in?"

"No! No. Trust me, you don't want to live here. But your family unit would be included in my family unit for quarantining purposes, and we could see each other in person. Without masks and from less than six feet away."

"Aren't there more important people?"

"No."

"Your assistant could actually hand you things instead of dropping them on a desk and backing up so you can get them."

"That's not a substantial inconvenience."

"You could have someone else do your hair and makeup."

She punctuates every word defensively as she says, "I am doing a _fine_ job, _thank you_."

"I know you are, but--Is...this a booty call?"

She nearly throws her slate in frustration and embarrassment. "Yes! I do expect more than sexual benefits, of course. And I understand that there are extreme downsides to accepting my offer. The press will immediately invade your privacy, and there are--sadly-- _a lot_ of rules you would have to follow, and you'd have to be okay with the fact that I will always be in the limelight and always out-rank you, and the country's needs will always come before yours."

"This is a really bad sales pitch for something I've already agreed to do."

She takes a deep breath. "There's also the fact that I have a high risk job. Even though they're all tested, I interact with many people every day. I'd understand if you didn't want to bring that risk home to your grandmother. She would also be joining my sheltering circle. Unless," the words catch in the back of her throat. "Unless you moved out."

"Ah. That...is something to think about."

They're both silent for a moment.

Zelda squeezes her eyes closed. This was a terrible idea.

"You know I moved in with her to keep her company during lock down," he says.

"I know. You've done so much to keep her safe."

"I...Z, I've been out _once_. I got groceries one time for her before the grocery stores closed. Even now that they're delivered, I wipe everything down before I bring it in the apartment, and then I immediately go and shower, and then I wipe down everything I touched."

She feels sick with guilt. "You're so careful."

"I don't go on daily walks, because I worry it's too dangerous."

"I know you don't. Of course, you can't come to the castle. There are so many people here. I shouldn't have asked. It was selfish. I'm sorry. We're going to have a cure soon. We might stomp it out even before then. We can wait. It's fine."

They're quiet again.

"I want to see you," he says quietly.

"I want to see you too," she says.

"Would it help you if I was there?"

Immeasurably. If she could hold his hand for five minutes, she could make it through the next twelve weeks. But she knows better than to say that. It would sway him too much.

It seems he can hear her answer in her silence.

He's quiet again. Probably weighing his options. If he joins her shelter group, he probably shouldn't go back to his grandmother's. He should go back to his own apartment, which has sat vacant for weeks. His grandma will be alone except for her group video calls. How will she get all her friends' audio to work? And he'll be alone when he's not seeing Zelda, which won't be that often. At least he'll get to walk around outside. Feel the wind on his face and smell the scent of whatever season it is these days. No one will wander in and sit down next to him on the sofa and ask what he's watching. No one will tell him that the scones he made are actually not that great. He'll probably talk to himself a lot.

"I don't need an answer today," Zelda says. "Or even tomorrow or next week. It's just an offer, and you can take it or leave it. It's not going to change anything either way."

He snorts at her, because that's ridiculous.

"Okay, fine. If you visit, people will figure out who you are and that will change things, and you'll have to follow some protocols when you're here and that will change things, and I'm sure physical contact will...But my point is that if you choose not to visit right now, I won't consider it a rejection. There really isn't a rush, and we can stay right where we are. Both figuratively and literally."

He breathes out what sounds like half a sigh, half a self-deprecating laugh. "I want to be the guy who'd drop everything to go to you."

"You already dropped everything to care for your grandmother. You have responsibilities, and I'm glad you're taking them seriously. It's something I love about you."

He blows air out between his lips, probably drags a hand through his hair. "Let me think on it."

"Of course!"

"It's just..."

"I know."

Her timer goes off, and she swears under her breath.

"Can...can this not be weird?" she asks. "Between us?"

There's warmth in his voice when he says. "No weirdness. Go. Have a productive afternoon. Send me Robbie's girlfriend's contact info."

"I have to _ask_ first before giving you that."

"Meh."

"Bye."

"Bye."

Zelda hangs up, feeling like garbage.

#

Link makes a buttery, garlic sauce and steams a whole artichoke so they can dip the leaves as a snack while they work on his grandma's latest puzzle and listen to her latest audio book. The puzzle shows Lake Hylia at sunset, and the book is super trashy.

For dinner, even though he has to use frozen crab meat, Link makes crab cakes, which are his grandma's favorites.

When he sets her plate down in front of her, she frowns at it, then looks up at him with an unamused look on her face.

"What's wrong?"

"What do you mean?" he asks, taking his seat across from her.

"You're moping. Did you and Z break up?"

"What?! No!"

Her face loosens into sympathy. "Oh, sweetheart. Are you two not joining your sheltering circles on Monday?"

He stares at her.

"I'm sure it's not a slight against you," she assures him. "She has to set a good example, so she might not expand her circle at all. Or I'm sure the king has already picked who gets to join them, and they've already met their size limit. Don't worry about her father too much. Someday he'll abdicate."

He stares at her.

"What?" she says. "We all know she's the brains behind the operation, and he's not even royalty by blood."

It's all a little much to tackle, so he latches onto, "I...don't think we're supposed to say things like that?"

She huffs and picks up her fork. "I'm a saucy old lady. I can say what I want."

He gives her a fond smile, and takes up his own fork so he doesn't have to look at her as he asks, "So if...if she asked...you'd be okay with that?"

"Okay with my grandson finally finding happiness with a girl who's brilliant and decisive and beautiful? Or okay with him being king one day? I don't know," she says sarcastically, "they both sound dreadful."

"Putting the cart before the horse."

"Hmm."

"But more immediately, you wouldn't be...worried I'd bring the virus back to you?" He risks a glance up at her.

She pauses. Frowns at him. Then rolls her eyes and tosses down her fork. "She asked you, and you said no because of _me_!?"

"I said I'd think about it."

"My own family, blaming me for a lack of romance! This is an outrage!"

"Grandma."

"Call her back right this second."

"It's a serious decision, and we have to be careful, and--"

"Who raised you!? No grandchild of mine would be making decisions about me without even asking."

"You could die!"

"But I'm not going to spread it to anyone else! Your queen asked you to aid her in her time of trial! You could swoop in with a box of home made macaroons! And instead, you decide to be _boring_. I'd rather be dead and go out in a _flare_ of _drama_! You know this about me!"

Link stares at her a moment. "She's...not queen?"

"Ugh!" His grandma slams up from the table as best she can, sweeps up her plate and carries it away to her bedroom. "Lt me know when you've called her to apologize."

He hesitates a moment, before going to get his slate from where he purposefully left it in the guest room. He texts Z, "My grandma's super ticked with me. Can I hide from her at your place on Monday?"

She texts back three exclamation marks.

#

Link has one pair of nice slacks, so that part is easy, but the rest of looking nice plan deteriorates before his eyes. Why did he not bring all his clothes when he moved in?! Why are all his clothes hideous?! He can't go to the castle like this! Maybe he should go back to his empty apartment where he left most of his meager wardrobe. No, his selection there is wider, but just as awful.

There are shirts on hangers spread over his bed and T-shirts on the floor, and he's in the closet frantically searching through the clothes at the edges--clothes that were here when he moved in but also aren't his grandma's so who knows who they once belonged to and who knows if there's anything that will fit him or will look okay.

His grandma leans into the room, looking like she's only missing a tub of popcorn to fully enjoy his melt-down.

Link pulls something from the closet and holds it up for her. "Why do you have a red velvet smoking jacket?"

She shrugs. "Sometimes people leave things when they go."

"Someone left a red velvet smoking jacket at your house."

"I haven't seen that in years. Isn't it soft? Don't wear it to the castle."

Link puts it back and says nothing else about how much his grandma used to get around. Instead, he buries both his hands in his hair and groans. "I can't go. I'm not fancy enough. I have to wait until clothing stores reopen.”

She steps inside and picks up a white button down from his bed. She inspects it, makes a face, then hands it to him. He brought it with him in case he had to go to a funeral. That was back when there were funerals. 

He shrugs into it. "This isn't enough to meet royalty, is it?"

She holds up his sports coat, but finds it lacking and tosses it back onto the bed. "I'm insulted that you think I don't know what's appropriate attire for a royal audience. As if you're the only person in the family who's dated royalty."

Link's fingers freeze on the third button of his shirt. He looks up at her with narrowed eyes. “I know I'm going to regret this, but you _have_ to give me details on that, or I'm going to jump to conclusions, and they're all bad."

"I dated her great uncle. The gay one."

"Ah. Okay."

"He was nice. And handsome. He took me to the best parties."

"Okay."

"I have something that might fit you." She vanishes into her room and reappears as he's tucking his shirt into his pants. She hands him a suit jacket and leaves again. He's getting it settled over his shoulders when she returns with a green tie with a subtle pattern. "Oh, that fits well!" She pops up his collar, tosses the tie around he back of his neck and sets to work knotting it. 

It's a nice jacket. He's just thinking that that's probably why she keeps it in her closet when she tucks his collar back down and spins him around so he can see himself in the mirror.

"Oh wow."

It fits well. Really well.

He buttons the front and, yeah, okay, he can meet Z in this.

His grandma beams at his reflection. 

He puts on his mask that his grandma made for him and he's barely worn, at first worried it'll throw off the whole impressive look he has going before he notices that it's almost exactly the same shade as his tie. His grandma hasn't let him down.

He tucks a box of freshly baked macaroons under his arm.

A black car waits for him in front of the building, and when Link walks up to it, the driver hops out with a clipboard. He has on a uniform of a suit, mask, gloves, and a driver's cap. Link has to show ID (by kind of throwing it to the driver, who inspects it closely, then throws it back), give the passcode Z has given him ("Sable Able"), and then answer a bunch of questions that he doesn't have a sore throat or a cough or a headache while the driver checks boxes off his list. Satisfied, the driver opens the back door for him, tells him to use the hand sanitizer inside, then walks away before Link can get too close to him.

He thinks the precautions are a bit much, as they'll be sitting in the same car, but when he climbs into the back, there's a solid wall between them, as if what was once a privacy screen has been replaced with something air-tight.

There are barely any other cars on the roads. Without his attention drawn from traffic and pedestrians, the facades of ancient stone buildings and the rows of trees down the boulevards stand out like never before. He boggles up at them like a tourist in his own city. 

It looks shockingly like Z's Animal Crossing town.

When they reach the castle gates, they're stopped by guards. The driver rolls down his window, reaches out to set the clipboard on the roof of the car and rolls the window back up before the guard steps up to inspect all their paperwork. The guard peers in at Link, who waves. It's hard to tell what the guard thinks of him with the lower half of his face covered and his hat shading his eyes.

The guard waves them through and they drive onto the castle grounds, circling to what must be a specified entrance. Link steps out of the car, and there's a guy at the door waiting for him. The man has yet another uniform. Maybe a butler. He bows to Link and leads him inside, and it's shocking how good the guy is at staying six feet away and yet acting like it's nothing. 

Link is guided first to a restroom, where he doesn't need to be told to wash his hands, then into a room that looks like it was once some kind of fancy sitting room, but the love seats and arm chairs have been replaced with futuristic cubicles made of glass. They look like giant fish tanks. The butler bows again and leaves him in the care of three Sheikah in full protective gear.

"The open room, please," one says, gesturing to the only cubicle with an open door. 

Link wonders what the hell he's gotten himself into. 

Two of the Sheikah follow him with a rolling cart, stopping outside the cubicle door. They instruct him to sit on the only piece of furniture: a long bench that has a cushy top, but is made out of some kind of material that would be easy to wipe down.

They fiddle a bit, preparing things on the rolling cart until one of them says, "Oh, I like your mask!"

"Thanks," Link says. Then because he's an idiot, "My grandma made it."

The other Sheikah clears his throat. "Confirm your name...Birth date...passcode...Have you recently had a sore throat?" The Sheikah goes through the list, nodding at Link's answers and typing away at his slate. When he's done, he turns things over to the other Sheikah, who steps into the cubicle with Link.

"Do you want the blood draw first or the swab test first?" she asks.

"There's a blood draw?"

"Yes. Sign this." She hands him a clipboard with a waver filled with tight text. He signs at the bottom.

"Let's do that first. Get it over with."

He shrugs one arm out of his jacket and rolls up his sleeve. He looks away as she wipes the crook of his elbow with alcohol and sticks in a needle. When she's done, she slaps on a neon pink band-aid and hands a test tube full of blood over to her colleague, who prints a label from a tiny printer on the rolling cart, and sticks the label onto the test tube.

"We're going to test you now," the Sheikah beside him says. "This--" she holds up a Q-tip in a clear plastic wrapper, except the Q-tip stick is probably about a foot long, "--Is going to go up your nose. Then it's going to keep going up your nose. It will not be comfortable, but just breathe through it, and it'll be done in about ten seconds. Some people say it feels like we're tickling your brain. Try your best not to sneeze."

"Umm," Link says.

The Sheikah peels the plastic from the stick.

"Pull down your mask so it's only covering your mouth...Tilt your head back...Good."

And then there's a Q-tip in Link's nose. And then there's a Q-tip _past_ Link's nose, in what is most definitely not nose territory anymore. Link's eye twitches. He grips the edge of the bench. Things should not be stuck that deep into the back in his head. He didn't even know that was possible. "Breathe," the Sheikah says, as she twists the Q-tip around a bit, scraping gunk off his brain. It's the most invasive thing he's ever felt, and the panic rises fast and fierce. And then it's over. The Sheikah is out of the cubicle and dropping the Q-tip in another test tube, and the other Shiekah is sealing it up and slapping on another label.

"The tests will take about an hour," she says. "For now, stay here. There's a button if you need anything. Do you want a magazine?"

"I've got my slate," he says. Feeling a bit woozy and still in a bit of shock, he slips it from his pocket and waves it.

"Good. The button if you need anything." Then she shuts the door on him. It seals closed with a sucking noise.

The air pressure changes. He can no longer hear the Sheikah talking, although he wouldn't have any idea if they were saying anything anyway with their faces covered. They slip the test tubes into one machine, then another, close them up, push a few buttons, then take seats at a set of wall screens, as if getting back to more important work. 

He texts Z. "If I test positive, is this room going to gas me?"

Her response is immediate. "You're here! I'm so excited!" A moment later she say, "No, you won't be gassed."

"Have you had this test?"

"I'm tested daily. But they come to me. I get to stay in my office."

He doesn't ask how often he'll have to get tested, or if he'll have to come here every time he does. That's a little too much information for him right now.

He types, "This is the most cleared out my sinuses have ever been."

"Mmm. Attractive."

"How do you still have blood after a blood draw every day?"

"That's just for you. Didn't you read the paperwork?"

He did not.

"You NEED to read the paperwork we give you."

"Apparently."

"Hope your tests goes well! Can't wait!" Then, "I have to do the big press conference for Phase 2, but I should be done by the time you're out."

The corner of his mouth twitches.

He looks at the Animal Crossing forums for the next hour. He never realized before how much it calms him. He tries to keep good posture and not hunch over his slate. He wants to make a good impression on absolutely everyone, even these Sheikah lab techs.

The Sheikah let him out when his tests comes back negative. She shoots him a thumbs up. "Way to go! No Covid. No STDs." 

"Oh," he says. It feels warm in here.

The Sheikah wave him out of the room to rejoin the butler, who guides him back to wash his hands again, then around so many turns that he's immediately lost.

"You will address Princess Zelda as Your Highness. Do not speak to her until she acknowledges you verbally. Do not offer your hand to shake. Do not turn your back to her. If you touch your face or if your mask slips, you will be removed immediately. If you cough on her, you will be charged with both assault and treason."

"Shit."

"You will not swear in her presence. She is with the press at the moment. We will wait for her on the west portico.”

Link doesn't know what a portico is, but all of a sudden, they're outside on a porch. He's not sure where they're headed until Zelda explodes out from between a pair of columns ahead of them. She's in full ceremonial regalia in a royal blue dress with trailing sleeves. It flares behind her like the tail of a comet. She has a fist in the fabric by her thigh, hiking up the skirt to let her walk more quickly. A golden crown flashes on her golden hair, which swings as she looks around, first the wrong way down the porch, then again when she spins towards him.

Their eyes lock.

His anxiety at meeting the princess vanishes. Because Z is standing in front of him. Because she's running towards him, and he's dropping his macaroons and jogging towards her, and she's more beautiful, more real the closer they get.

They stop with their toes nearly touching, anxious to be near each other, but hesitant to touch. It's been so long since either of them have touched anyone. They've both been avoiding it for weeks, fearful to let anyone too close. They stare at each other, taking each other in. Her eyes are such a brilliant shade of green.

They reach for each other at the same time. Each holding the other's elbows. She makes a soft squeak of surprise at the contact, then beams at him. Her smile is like the sun, even if he can only see it in her eyes. 

"Hi," she breathes.

"Hey," he says.

Her hands slip up his arms. His slide to her waist. She's solid and alive beneath his palms, and he lets his hands soak up the warmth of her, the reality of her. Her eyes flutter closed and her whole body seems to sag, so he holds her more firmly.

Her hands roam down his chest and back up, smoothing down the lapels of his jacket, reassuring herself that he's real too.

She reaches for his face, then stops herself. One of her hands slides around the back of his neck, skin touching skin, and it's electric. He fights back a sigh but can't fight back the way his eyes close. He can't help the heat in them when they open again. 

He feels her gasp, feels the tension in her body shift. In a rush she says, "I can make kissing happen."

He nods a bit too enthusiastically.

She grabs his hand and drags him down the porch and into a hallway, away from the curious press team that's wandered out behind her.

The second they're inside, she spins on him. She shoves him against a wall as crowds in close, neatly popping her mask from her ears. Before he can appreciate how pretty the lower half of her face is, she has his mask off too and there's nothing but her mouth, sealed strong and insistent over his. She's warm and vibrant and crashing against him. His hand’s in her hair, and her tongue’s in his mouth, and he pulls her tight, warm against his chest, her hips flush against his. He gasps as her hands scramble inside his jacket, and his heart pounds as she tugs his shirt from his pants. He has her leg hooked over his hip, one hand scrambling through her layers of skirt to find her knee, her thigh. She thrusts her hands up under his shirt and his whole body jumps. He breaks the kiss to pant. 

So it takes him a second to realize she's frozen, a confused picker between her eyebrows. Then she yanks up his shirt to his armpits and nearly loses her balance to glare down at his stomach. Then glare up at him.

“You have abs!” she accuses.

“Uh.”

“How do you have abs? You eat so much butter!”

“Sorry?”

“You haven’t left your apartment in weeks!”

“I do a lot of sit ups.”

She stares at him.

“Are...you mad?” he asks.

“Why didn’t you tell me this?”

“You never even asked how many crunches I can do.”

“I could have been enjoying photos of this! I could have--Did you just quote one of the jock villagers?!”

A slow smile spreads across his face.

“You dork,” she gasps.

They surge in for another kiss.

#

Link's startled to find his own face on the front page of the Animal Crossing forum. He barks a laugh and leans over to show Z, who drapes herself over his arm and laughs too. She reaches out with a finger to up-vote it before kissing at the side of his neck.

The picture is the two of them on the porch, staring at each other from an inch away like they're ready to tear each other's clothes off (which, admittedly, happened). She's in her full regalia. He's in his nice suit. The iron-on design on the side of his mask is surprisingly well framed, but aside from that, it's a hot picture. He taps it and saves it to his slate memory, which makes Z laugh again, and he surges in to taste it until they topple over and his slate drops, forgotten.

The headline for the image is "Princess has eye sex with mystery dude, who has A GIANT NOOK LEAF ON HIS MASK. WTF?"


End file.
